A wide angle vision sensor with fovea-design of distortion lens and the simulated images

The author previously presented a concept of a new vision sensor for intelligent mobile robots. Similar to human eyes, the proposed vision sensor has an attention zone at the center of a wide visual field with the angle of 120 degree, and executes the necessary movements of viewpoint. A distortion lens plays an important role in the system, which enlarges the image in the attention zone and compresses the one in the peripheral zone. The lens has been designed in order to realize the system. The specification and characteristics are presented in detail. According to the characteristics the projected images and the recognized images are simulated by computer. The results shows that the proposed system will work well to recognize the environments of mobile robots